Television: Inspiring Post-Mortem

"There's nothing here," began Jackie Gleason, "except the orchestra and myself." It was to have been the second telecast of his new CBS panel show, You're in the Picture, but the studio was stripped to the brick walls. After sipping from a coffee cup ("a new coffee: Chock-Full-o'-Booze"), Gleason squarely faced the camera and continued: "We have a creed tonight, and the creed is honesty . . . Last week we did a show that laid the biggest bomb—it would make the H-bomb look like a two-inch salute."

For the rest of his...

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